


Those are pearls that were his eyes

by itsahardknocklife



Category: Meteor Methuselah | Immortal Rain
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Families of Choice, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, I'll add more tags as I figure out what's going in this fic, Mild Gore, Multi, Other, Redemption, Reincarnation, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, This fic contains blatant ending spoilers for the series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5980237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsahardknocklife/pseuds/itsahardknocklife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>As soon as he gained consciousness he knew it hadn't worked. He remembered everything.</i>
</p><p>What would happen if Rain and Machika couldn't help Yuca? What if he kept remembering?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I, Tiresias

**Author's Note:**

> A friend of mine came up with this au, and I liked it so much that I decided to write it. I've never written a fic before, God help me.

As soon as he gained consciousness he knew it hadn't worked. He remembered everything. The island, the oblivion brought when the Temperion was destroyed. The forgetfulness brought on by the pain of his soul shattering like glass. But he was still here. 

He cried out, choking on amniotic fluid, twisting against his mother. She would die too soon. For the first time, that broke his heart. 

Rain, Rain, Rain. He remembered him, lost on a boat spinning out at sea, one hand reaching back, his hair blowing over his eyes, becoming indistinguishable from foam and wavecaps. He remembered the way the salt lingered on his tongue when he told Rain he loved him, the bitterness that he'd waited too long.

But this time, when he was born, Rain would be there. Rain, kind, warm Rain. Rain, gentle as spring, would be there. Rain would wait for him. Rain had forgiven him, Rain would forgive him again. Rain would--

Rain would be dead.

Rain would be dead. He flashed back to the surgery and the hours of blood and metal and the blue veins shivering beneath Rain's pale skin with the force of change. Rain would be dead. Rain would have turned into a monster, all twisted, rigid skin and dark eyes and hunger when the ichor ran out. And Machika--

Machika would be dead too. Her bright light blown out by . . . sickness? Old age? Grief? Or . . . Rain. Rain turned feral and mindless and sharp. She wouldn't have left him. She'd have held him as he lost control and cut her life off cleanly. 

God. He could see it. The blood across her back, seeping from her skin and soaking into her bright hair, the pale ridges of bone and --

He felt it again, the shattering. His sun and his rain – his spring – both gone. He reached out in the dark, in the blindness, gulping drowning breaths. He felt the wall of skin, pressed his hand against the shelf of hip and felt his finger begin moving, digging into the the soft curve. 

_R-A-I-N._

_Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain._

Until the word almost lost all meaning. But he held on. He held on to Rain's soft eyes and his rough hands, remembered the way they'd felt at the last, stroking the hair back from his forehand, scratched and rough and warm, warm, warm. His upside down smile like a piece of the moon. He couldn't be gone he couldn't be – _Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain Rain._

Rain.

– - - - - - - - -

He gave birth to himself when he couldn't take it anymore. Being cramped and curled, his face forced into his knees like a beggar. The raw walls of his mother chafing his skin.

He clawed his way out. He ripped through, skin catching under his finger nails and teeth and burst into being with a choke and a scream. The air was cold on his skin, it felt like ice, it felt like fire, it felt like – rain. 

Where was he, when—what was his name— _Rain._

He stepped out of the shell of his mother and stumbled against a wall as his foot sliced open on the edge of a broken bottle. The brick scraped at his new skin, leaving raw lines on his arm. The smell hit him all at once, the suffocating stench of an alley, and his foot flared with heat where the glass cut him. 

He wiped the blood and slime from his eyes with shaking hands, and looked back at the woman who would have been his mother, had he been less of a curse. She was young, dark, curling hair, mouth torn open in a scream, the remains of a blue dress splattered with pieces of herself, the hole in her abdomen dying everything red. 

He leaned to the side and tried to throw up, his stomach surging painfully. Nothing came out. He looked again. Her dusky skin, eyes squeezed shut. So young. They were always young. 

Staring at her face he traced the shape of the jaw and nose, mouth, the curve of the brow, trying to see the ghost of expressions. Would she have been kind? Would she have loved him like Sharem? Or would she have hated him, reviled the son who burst from her full grown, who needed no teaching, no comfort?

But he would never know. He had never known his mothers. It had always been this way. Young, probably unmarried, alone. That was when he was lucky. When they gave birth alone, and afraid. 

If not he'd probably have been burned.

That memory made his legs shake, and he collapsed in a pile on the ground, the stink of blood and rotting fruit and the sharp smell of viscera and urine. He shivered against the wind, listening. Quiet. No one came to help her as she died. The alley they were in opened onto a street, dark and empty. 

_Street rat._

The word flashed through his mind, twisting his mouth into a bitter scowl. A full moon sifted through the shadows, and he squinted up into the slice of sky between buildings. It seemed too bright. He held his hand up shield his eyes, and thought he could feel the soft and steady light against his fingers. Gentle, warm. 

A name weighed on his tongue. He closed his palm, snuffing out the moon.

“Rain,” he said.


	2. Neither living nor dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's day!

“Hey, kid!” The sound clatters against the hard walls of the buildings.

He doesn't say anything, just huddles against the brick, leaning further into the shelter of a dumpster. His hands a shaking, mottled purple and his feet numb against the ground. 

Normally he would have looked for help, for shelter. But the knowledge of Rain and Machika's death was too new. He'd fled from the body of his mother and run through the night, only stopping to steal a set of clothes he found hanging on a line. In a different town, in a different alley, he fell against the cold metal of the dumpster and let the knowledge swallow him. 

He's been here for hours, or days, unable to look away from the sinkhole in his mind where their faces used to be. At some point, he realizes he's in shock, fighting for breath against grief. He doesn't want to think. He doesn't want to do anything. He'll die if he stays there.

_So be it._

“Hey, kid.” 

The voice is closer, seeming too loud, distorted, and pitched too low. His eyes slowly focus on a pair of shoes, the ratted, unraveling hem of an old pair of pants standing in front of him. The knees bend, and he finds himself staring at a tanned, sharp face and brown eyes. 

He can feel the heat radiating from another body, finds himself bending into it. It was warm the night he was born, but the temperature dropped suddenly . . . last night? Early this morning? He can't remember. Everything is frozen. He hopes it will freeze him. Hopes he'd be able to leave this life behind. Maybe the next will be better. 

The face in front of him is rough, scratched, tanned with sun and marked with small scars. He can't focus on it as a whole. Instead, he looks at the eyes, the crooked nose, or the lips, thin, chapped, and peeling, one at a time. He can't read the expression and looks away, his movement feeling slow, inching and painful. He wants to disappear.

“Kid. Hey. Is that . . . blood?”

A long hand reaches out and grabs his arm. He yanks it back, skin aching from the pull, and holds it behind his knees. He notices for the first time that he never washed it off, the blood and birth slime. It's dried and clinging to his skin, flaking off in patches. 

He looks back up at the man, and isn't sure what expression is on his face—it feels flat and blank, a discarded canvas. The wind blows, scuttling behind his shelter, and he shivers as if he'll break apart.

“Fuck,” the man says. 

There's the sound of a zipper and the rustle of cloth, and suddenly he's covered by a thick, puffed coat, the inner lining wonderfully warm from another body. He hugs it to him as the shivering becomes violent, knocking his teeth together. 

“Come on, let's get you some help.”

He presses back into the wall, skin so cold he can't feel anything than sharp pricks of pain from the rough brick. The frozen metal sears the ball of one shoulder with cold. The man holds a hand out, soothing.

“Ok, ok. Look, just. Just let me get you somewhere warm.” 

He wants to die again. When he first curled into the blunt shelf of the dumpster he thought that maybe, if he died, if he kept dying, instead of trying to make it through life after life, he'd find rest. He's so tired, his heart is an old house collapsing on itself. He just wants to lay down. He's so-

“Please,” the man says, bending to look him in the face, eyes lit like tree bark in the sun. Like still, brown water ponds shadowed by pines. It feels like the first color he's seen since his birth. It feels like the only color he can see in this bleached world. He can almost taste summer, just looking at them. 

_Live, live, live_

He finds himself reaching out with both hands almost mechanically, imploring. The man scoops him up, holding him close. He rests his head on the edge of the man's shoulder, looking back, and feels small. What age is his body? Five? Six? 

The man stands, starts walking. It's so warm. He remembers Machika carrying him, Rain holding him after he wrecked the helicopter, and suddenly, he's sobbing, breaking open in a jagged line. The tears on his face burn hot and fast, soaking the shirt under his cheek. It feels like he's suffocating. The man reaches up and rubs his back, cooing.

“It's ok,” he says, “You're ok. You're safe.” 

He curls against the furnace of skin, crying because everything is cracked and broken and he will never be whole again. 

\- - - - -

The water in the bathtub is turning brown as the man scrubs blood off his back. But for the first time in this life, he's not cold. So he sinks into it, waiting for the heat to seep into his bones.

He holds up a hand, water dripping from his fingers, looking at it as if it were something strange. The veins of the radial artery are blue and prominent under his skin – the smooth skin of a newborn, pale as if his entire life was spent in darkness. The fingers are short, the nails purple from cold and bruised from birth. 

_This is mine,_ he thinks, _this is me._

But it looks like meat. It looks like a shell. He can't quite believe that something lives under the thin pull of skin over knuckle—that he does. It's unsettling, and he feels lost in a body that's not his making, that doesn't belong to him. 

The man makes a noise, touching the stiff spikes of his hair.

“Kid, you may want to cut this. I'm not sure I can wash it all out.”

He doesn't say anything. He hasn't spoken a word. Not when they arrived at the man's home, and he watched while the water poured, steaming into the tub. He'd stared at it, immobile, watching the water fall slowly, as time slowed and creaked around him, flaking rust.

The man had helped him undress, helped him into the hot water, and started scrubbing. He should be embarrased. But he'd been a child in his last life. And it feels so good to have someone taking care of him. So he wraps his arms around his legs, rests his chin on his knees, and lets the blood soak from his skin. The cut on his foot throbs against slick bottom of the tub. 

The man sighs, a chill of breath across his spine.

“Well,” he said, “I'm glad to see that none of this is yours. Must have been some fight, though—I don't think I want to see the other guy.”

No, he really doesn't. He squeezes his eyes shut against the thought, and feels his shoulders curl. The man scrubs there, the cloth scratching against his shoulder blades. The room is silent except for the sharp _plink!_ Of water dripping from the faucet. 

“So, you got a name? Or should I just keep calling you, 'Hey Kid?'”

He's had so many names, they burrow into him, cutting holes in his memory. Which name could he possibly give this man? But he feels his lungs suck in air, feels his lips moving, his voice rough and cracked as desert earth.

“. . . Yuca.” 

The name echoes around the tiled bathroom and skips off the water, and he can see Rain, standing in a field of white flowers with the sun crowning his head, calling to him. He buries his head into the scraped skin of his knees.

“My name is Yuca.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do one chapter per life, initially, but I think they deserve a little more time than I was willing to give, initially. So you can look forward to more of our friend the Good Samaritan and Yuca dissociating/depersonalizing. 
> 
> I realize I switched tenses between the last chapter and this one. I can't decide which I'd prefer, but this one just felt like it needed to be in present tense. And I'm terrible at writing in present tense. 
> 
> So I've churned out two of these pretty quick, but I'm not sure when the next one will be -- I have no idea how much time I'll have to write this week with work and all, or if I'll even have the next chapter planned out before the weekend. So we'll just have to see. 
> 
> Anywho, have a good week!


	3. You know only a heap of broken images

There was a bell ringing somewhere over the heads of the trees. The deep, somber sound of a church bell, each peal fading before the next began.

“Funeral bells,” Rain said.

Yuca squinted up at the light shining through the branches above him, turning the leaves glowing, glimmering green and gold. It hurt to look at. He could hear the scratch of pen on paper. Rain, learning to write.

“Isn't it strange that the same bells that ring at funerals also ring at weddings?” Rain asked.

Yuca turned over in the grass to face him. Watched his fingers balance the pen, white with gripping a little too tightly. His hair covered his eyes and the sun fell through the trees to light the curve of his neck. He smiled down at the paper, humming slightly, tunelessly, low and cracked. Not the song Freya always played, but one of his own making.

Listening to it, listening to Rain singing his own song in such a way knocked something loose, like a window being thrown open for the first time in years. He wanted to tell him, then. 

_Rain, I cannot die. Not really._

He could see Rain bend low over the paper, frowning hard at something, in his hand the pen moving slowly, carefully. He couldn't. Rain was a wedding. 

_And I'm a funeral bell._

He thought Rain said something.

“What?” He said. 

Rain was gone, in his place, an old, withered man, eyes burned with smoke and face smeared with mud. He ran at Yuca with a shrill, broken scream.

Yuca yelled and threw up his hands and watched the man impale himself on a sword, the blood blooming across his stomach and falling down the blade, catching in Yuca's hands. The sky was clouded with smoke and he coughed on the sharp smell of burning hair and flesh. Through the sharp skree of metal on metal and distant shouts he heard the sound of a piano threading its way through the dim light. He stumbled to his feet, boots sucking from the mud, following the soft twinkling until he came to a doorway. 

Inside a young girl sat at a piano. The bell of her purple dress swayed in a breeze blowing through the french windows, carrying the scent of roses. She looked over her shoulder at him, pulling dark, curling hair out of the way, a dimple pinned to her cheek. She patted the bench beside her.

“Come on,” she said airily, “We have to practice.”

“I have to practice,” he said, voice steady. 

In his hand the scalpel shook badly as he lowered it and pressed the point to skin, watching it depress, then slice through. The blood had already pooled and coagulated in the buttocks, legs and back, and none seeped from the incision. He gripped his wrist with his other hand to steady it, took a deep breath, smelling the rot and mushroom of grave-dirt, and made another cut. He did not look at the face. 

“Aim for the heart,” someone said.

He sighted along the barrel, aiming where he was told. The deer flicked its ears nervously, standing still and scenting the low brush. Yuca saw the head jerk in his direction, the wide, soft eyes. He let out a breath and fired, the crack ringing in his ears, the recoil kicking him in the shoulder. His companion sighed, a miss. The white flash of the tail disappeared into the gloom with a rustle of leaves.

“You're too kindhearted,” his partner said, “You have to mean it.”

“What?”

“You have to mean it,” the priest said. 

He dipped a quill into a pot of ink, and scratching filled the room. A beeswax candle burned on the table, dying the priest's robe a sickly vermilion. Yuca swallowed with difficulty, dry tongue blocking his throat, his eyes itching from smoke.

“I. I do.”

The scratching stopped as ink splattered across the paper. The priest did not have neat handwriting.

“No,” the priest said, laying the quill down, leaning forward so the candle cast sharp, grotesque shadows on his face. “I don't believe you. You have to mean it.” 

“But--”

“At this rate, you'll be burned for heresy,” the priest said, knocking one fingernail against the polished wood of the desk for emphasis. The sharp _click_ echoed around the vaulted ceiling. 

Yuca shrank into the chair, arms pulling against the restraints that cut into his wrists, his chest tight. 

“Please,” he whispered. His lungs filled with smoke. 

“ _Yuca._ ”

He woke to a shadowed face leaning above his, a rough hand on his shoulder. The skin felt bruised. He lunged forward and sank his teeth into the arm, tasting the salt of skin.

“FUCK.” 

His breath was knocked from him as he was flung back against the headboard, and he struggled to get it back, gasping. Each breath ached, his throat scratched and raw from screaming. The man flipped on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with soft yellow light – _flickering light, No_ – and examined his arm. A white crescent stood out from the dark skin, the deep indent of teeth still visible. 

“You've got sharp teeth, kid.”

Yuca's breathing evened out, and he sorted through his mind, trying to put the right memories with the right life. The hummingbird beat of his heart began to slow to its old singing rhythm. 

“You know who I am?” The man asked. 

Yuca looked at the man's hands, the scarred skin, long, dark hair, the eyes . . . He reached up, slowly, to touch the face in front of him. The skin was warm, the stubble scratched his fingertips—an added depth of sense that was vibrant, real, and no dream.

“Zeke,” he said. 

“Good,” Zeke grunted, reaching out to smooth Yuca's hair back. A few strands clung to his forehead with sweat. 

“That was some dream you were having. Woke me up.” Zeke said. 

Yuca's lips pressed into a thin line as he wondered what to say. He never knew how to tell people about his dreams, his memories. He'd never told Rain, either. How could he possibly explain that he relieved centuries every night? 

Outside the window, a bird began to sing. They both looked, seeing the sky's fading dark.

“Now's as good a time as any for breakfast,” Zeke said, “You hungry?”

\- - - -

Yuca perched on a stool in the small, brown kitchen and watched Zeke make eggs, noticing the scars painting his skin for the first time. Traces of bullets and blades. The house was small, clean and quiet, but his didn't appear to be a quiet life. 

Zeke hadn't talked about himself, and hadn't mentioned taking Yuca anywhere else since he first picked him up in the alley. After the bath last night Yuca was handed a shirt and blanket and informed that the couch was a fairly comfortable place to sleep. 

He'd fallen asleep quickly, easily, until the nightmares woke him. Yuca frowned at the shirt cutting a dark line across his bare knees. He wouldn't be trying to sleep tonight. He'd wait out the dark with wide, staring eyes. At least then he wouldn't wake up screaming. 

He hadn't slept since – _Machika._

Right before the Temperion. His head in her lap. She smelled like sunflowers and she felt like Rain. He couldn't—

Tears fell onto the formica counter and he ducked his head to hide the sudden redness, the crippling loss he knew stood out on his face. He saw Zeke looking, anyways, and pulled out the collar of his shirt, blowing his nose on the faded fabric with a harsh, angry honk. Zeke scraped the eggs onto a plate and put it in front of Yuca then turned to the stove, cracking two more into the skillet. 

They watched them sizzle in silence. Zeke frowned at the stove, pushing hair back from his eyes. 

“Listen, Ki—Yuca. Are you sure I can't take you anywhere? You have a family? You need a hospital or something?”

Yuca drew a finger through the teardrops on the counter. Connect-the-dots. Cold, saltwater constellations he'd lost the names for. 

He wondered how much he should tell this stranger. He could fabricate a lie, make his way in the world. But the way he was now, he'd probably end up in an alley again. And he was just so tired. He wondered if Zeke would let him stay, or if he'd force him into an orphanage—he was sure by now he meant him no harm. Either way, Yuca thought, he'd be able to get his bearings, and maybe, with a little time . . . He laughed, a quiet snort, and Zeke looked up from the eggs. 

What did it matter? he had nothing but time. He decided to stick to the simplest version of the truth.

“No,” he said. “I'm fine.” 

_Oh._ That was a lie. 

There was silence, the scraping of a wood spatula against metal, the clink of the pan's rim against ceramic. Zeke sat down across the table and fluffed his bangs back, looking at Yuca with mild alarm, and then resignation.

“Well. You can stay here today while you figure things out,” Zeke said.

Yuca nodded, relief catching at his throat, and looked back at the cooling eggs on his plate. 

“Zeke?”

“Hmm?”

“I need a fork.” 

\- - - -

One day turned into two, and two days turned into a week. Yuca wandered through this life aimlessly. For the first time, he was cut adrift, spinning without an anchor or a sense of direction. He lived grudgingly, tired and without hope, but without malice. He no longer wanted to blow out the candle of the world. He didn't know what he wanted. Instead, he lay on the beat-in couch and watched the sunlight inch across the floor, coloring the scratched wood a thick and vibrant gold. 

He didn't cry anymore, and he didn't sleep. He barely talked. After a week of this, Zeke came to stand in front of him. He reached down, grabbed Yuca under his arms, and lifted him to his feet, his toes scrabbled against the wood, trying to gain purchase on the dusty boards. 

“Yuca,” Zeke said, “you can't stay here.”

He clung to the boards. If he had to leave . . . If he had to leave he'd probably just die. Move on to the next life. There wasn't a point to this one. 

Zeke must have seen the way he flinched away, curling in on himself, slight though it was.

“Not _here._ ” he threw a hand at peeling walls and low ceiling of the house. “ _There._ ” He pointed at the couch.

He sighed, and combed his hair back with his fingers and then crouched down to look Yuca in the eye.

“Look. You're. You're welcome to stay here, though I'm not sure it's the best thing for you. But I've got something I need to take care of, and I don't want to leave you here alone. Is there anything—”

“Records,” Yuca said, “I want to look at records.”

\- - - -  
Zeke held his hand as they left the small, creaking house and walked down the cracked sidewalk. It was absurd, but something about the gesture felt warm. He wrapped that warmth around himself, guarding against the chill of nihilism. Zeke was stiff and stoic, and seemed hesitant to touch Yuca or interact with him too much. It was a reservation that struck Yuca as fragile, as if Zeke were guarding something delicate, rather than rude. And he was kind. 

Zeke had borrowed some clothes from a neighbor, an older woman with a pack of grandkids, so Yuca was dressed warmly against the chill. 

As they walked, Yuca looked around, staring intently at everyone they passed, trying to see what Rain saw. But no matter how much he tried, they just looked like meat. The town was small, full of broken down houses and empty storefronts and before he knew it they stopped in front of a chipped-brick building. 

“Records storage,” Zeke said. He let go of Yuca's hand. “You'll be ok here?”

Yuca nodded.

“I'll be back to get you when I'm done,” Zeke said. He turned sharply, almost military, on his heel and walked away. As the stretch between them grew, Yuca could feel the silence growing, too. Zeke didn't expect him to be there when he returned. He wasn't sure he would be, either. 

Head buried into his scarf against the ghosting chill, Yuca pushed open the doors. Inside was a dim, narrow room with flickering lights. There were no windows, and an empty desk sticking out from the wall. The space was full of grimy metal cubicles containing holo-stations. He picked an empty one, in the back, facing the door. 

He needed to get a sense of how far he'd come. He hadn't calculated his rebirth last time because he'd hoped to end it. He pulled up the screen and his fingers hovered over the glowing keys. The date in the corner of the screen followed a calendar he didn't recognize.

_How long had it been_

He could read through the historical records, or he could look for . . . He pulled up the database and searched, “Calvaria,” figuring that would be the fasted way to learn when he was in time. He scanned the results, clicked one.

_The megacorporation Calvaria of the last millennium, most famously responsible for the creation bioweapons known as “angels,” had a controversial history since its founding . . ._

“Last millenium?” He frowned and scanned further down. It talked about the creation of the angels, the Temperion, but only in vague detail.

_After leaked data connected the company to a rogue satellite and half the city was destroyed by a released bioweapon, Calvaria was dissolved in . . ._

He read the date, froze, and flicked his eyes back up to the corner of the screen, his mind weaving through the numbers. Ice filled him. It had been nearly 1,000 years since he last walked the earth. Rain and Machika had been dead for nearly a millennium. His breath stilled in his lungs. He would not cry again. Not now. 

A few cubicles down from him, a girl with bobbed hair laughed loudly, the sound seemed distant and echoed oddly in the small space. The light seemed hazy, sickly. He closed his eyes, imagined an iron bar slamming into place in his spine, and felt his back straighten, shoulders stiffen. He would make it through this. 

He shook his head, and went back to the database, choosing to read through the records of the centuries that had passed since he was last alive instead of poking further into things that were still too painful.

They had not been peaceful. They never were. He scanned each article, they were all summaries, laughably generalized and watered down. He winced at the setbacks in science and medicine after wars, the historical rewrites that occurred as countries drew new borders, the diseases that wiped out whole continents. It was humanity's old story. 

Hours passed, and the people around him changed. Men with matted beards and tattoos, a group of teens clustering around a screen, laughing, a mother juggling a baby on one shoulder, tapping out her search with one hand. The room had no windows, but he felt his body lean towards twilight as he blinked around the room. 

Where were the other records? This seemed like such a small number, and there were so many things he wanted to know, still. And where was Zeke, he wondered, eyes flicking over to the double doors. He should go look for him. But first . . . there was something he needed to know. 

“Rain Jewlitt,” he typed into the search bar. No results. He hesitated and tried another search, “The Immortal Methuselah.” A hit. He clicked the article.

_The Immortal Methuselah is a folk hero and trickster with stories that originate as early as approximately 1,500 years ago at the start of the Illumina war. According to legend, Methuselah was a man who figured out the secret to immortality and spent his time playing tricks on heaven. In some stories, he is accompanied, or pursued by, death. No one is sure of the exact origins . . ._

He read through some of the stories, attempted burnings and witch hunts. He felt something twist in him as he realized exactly what he'd done. No. He'd known what he was doing. There was no use feeling remorseful when he knew exactly what would happen. That was the point. He'd wanted someone, anyone, to understand him. 

He'd wanted Rain to show him a way out. He'd waited, hoping against hope, that Rain would survive, his kindness intact, his sanity intact. He'd been so tired of being born in the cold, and he'd wanted someone kind, someone warm, to be waiting for him so badly. As brief as his last life had been, Rain had given it a purpose, and that thought was a bright sun in him.

He paused. Purpose, huh. His thoughts began to turn. The cycle of rebirth was a familiar enemy to him. It happened to everyone. _It happened to Rain._ He stared unseeing at the screen. 

If he could. If he could figure out when Rain would be born, if their lives could line up again . . . It was something he'd never tried before, but he wrote the algorithm two lifetimes ago and his mind was already pulling out the long string of numbers. 

He'd never tried it with another person before. But maybe. He closed out the screen, fingers itching for a way to write it down again, to figure it out, to learn when Rain would walk the world again, spreading flowers in his wake. 

He practically ran out of the room, bursting through the doors into the cold winter air, eyes on the darkening sky, face splitting in a smile. 

He'd find him. _Rain._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter reminded me that I'm not good at writing long things. I actually cut this in half and reserved the second bit for the next chapter. From now on, chapters will be exactly as long as they need to be.
> 
> Even though I have a good chunk of chapter 4 written, I can't say when I'll be able to finish it. It's project article week for me, so I'll be working some crazy long hours trying to get that in before Saturday. 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated, so let me know what you think!


	4. The broken fingernails of dirty hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuca needs to avoid alleys.

The cold slipped into every crease it could find, gnawing at his skin. It had been hours, and still no Zeke. It was almost full dark now, the sun just a soft brush of yellow in the west. His breath clouded in the flickering light of the streetlamps. He couldn't feel his nose anymore, and it had been ages since he'd smelled anything besides the blank hammer of cold. While he waited, his fingers tapped against the slick from of his coat as if on keys, skidding across the material. Numbers and code looped and whorled through his brain as he picked each apart, fitting together the algorithm that would tell him where Rain was. 

But as the records hall closed, the streetlights blinked to life, and people slid out of shops with a jingle of bells and a release of heat, he began to think about what to do next. Now, those shops were closing, the streets slowly emptying, the stream of people drying up as they returned home. 

Zeke wasn't coming. He needed to figure out something else. He was bound to this life now, at least until he he could sift through the boundless future days for the one, bright moment that held Rain. 

As the last of the streetlamps burst to life, he gave up and began walking, heading for the edge of town. He wrapped himself in a web of numbers, stringing dates together. He just needed a computer. He just needed – his calculations came to a stuttering halt as his brain stumbled over a blank space.

A date. A birthday. He didn't have Rain's birthday. Rain, a refugee immigrant, whose identity and records were lost in fire and war. Who'd been too young to remember his birthday, or do more than ballpark his age. They'd never celebrated birthdays, they'd never--

His feet were rooted to the ground, breath coming in fast, mind worrying at the gap in the code like a tongue at a lost tooth. Maybe he could use the year, a range of years. It would be harder, but --

_God. After everything. After everything I've lost --_

His thoughts were broken by the sharp crack of a gun. There was smack of flesh on flesh and a grunt of pain, and he jumped to the side as a man came barreling out of an alley. The man landed face first on the street and jumped back up, clothing tousled and the side of his face shredded by concrete. His nose was broken. A yell came from the alley and the sound of more punches. The man cursed, fumbled for a gun hanging at his side, and turned back to the alley.

His eyes fell on Yuca. 

_Oh no._ He turned to run and felt a rough hand grab at his hair and fire ripped across his scalp as he was yanked backwards. He hit the man's chest with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs, and he was dragged into the shadowed alley, momentarily stunned. 

“STOP.” The man yelled, and Yuca felt it reverberating in the hollow places of his body. An arm wrapped around his neck, pressing into his windpipe, and he choked, rasping for air. He heard the metallic click of a gun next to his ear. 

There was the sound like a kick to a bag of sand and a gasp, and when his eyes adjusted Yuca saw two men holding a third to the ground. The face was broken and bruised, blood dripping from the nose and a split lip, but Yuca recognized it. Zeke. 

They were both frozen, Yuca choking against the pressure of the forearm against his throat, Zeke looking up at him, face ground into the sludge of the alley. 

“You always did have a soft spot for kids,” the man said. 

One of the men holding Zeke brought a black boot down on his thigh, and he cried out – a short, sharp sound like a kicked dog. When the foot lifted Yuca saw a hole pierced in the cloth where blood bubbled out. He'd been shot. Yuca took a deep breath and willed himself to be still, willed the waves of adrenaline and the sharp spike of fear to recede. He needed to be calm. He took a breath, and felt himself untether from his body as a cold, sharp calm settled over him. It was familiar, like stepping back into a house he'd lived in. It was how he'd survived centuries. 

“Please,” Zeke said, and his voice sounded tinny and distance, “Let him go.” 

“Not until we're done talking,” the man spat, the noise wobbling in the air. “What the fuck makes you think you can just leave, after all we've done for you --”

“You mean all I've done for you,” Zeke shot back. “Nothing would have--”

“ _Don't you fucking interrupt me,_ ” the man said, and Yuca saw the light from the street paint the gun's barrel as it was pointed towards Zeke. The movement seemed slow, forced, and he thought he could see every hair on the man's hand, etched against the dim light.

Now was his chance. 

Time zipped back to normal as Yuca grabbed the barrel and wrenched it away and down, hearing the soft _pop_ of the thumb breaking. The gun went off, the sound a roaring scream in Yuca's ears, the bullet chipping the brick and ricocheting out the alley. The man swore and loosened his hold on Yuca, who slithered out of his grip and leaned his weight on the man's wrist, pushing it down and in until he'd wrestled the weapon away. His fingers scrabbled against the grip, small hands trying to fit where his memory told them. This was harder than he remembered. He was too small. 

“ _You fucking little--_ ”

Yuca aimed past the hand reaching for him, saw eyes crest white with fear, and shot the man in the head, point blank. He heard the wet _thump_ of brain and skull hitting the concrete and the air filled with the copper smell of blood. He pivoted around and shot the two men holding Zeke while they were fumbling for their weapons. They fell slowly, seeming to cave in on themselves as they hit the ground and lay like discarded dolls, empty and hollow. 

_Meat._

It was over in seconds. He was out of practice and his hand shook with the weight of holding the gun. His shots were a little left of center, but even five lifetimes couldn't erase centuries of marksmanship. The metal and plastic heated from the four shots was pleasantly warm and familiar. 

Zeke struggled to his knees, his mouth open, blood leaking slowly from the hole in his thigh.

“Can you walk on that?” Yuca asked, gesturing with the gun. Zeke jerked away, hands lifting to shield his face and throat. 

_Oh._

A familiar darkness grew in his stomach, filling his veins with cold. 

_Monster._

Yuca looked away, swallowed. Closed his eyes. 

He focused on the memory of Machika running to help him, scythe raised the red skirt of her dress flaring. Rain, jumping after him when he crashed.

_Yuca!_

He took a deep breath and looked at Zeke's blood painting the ground. He could be brave too. Some things needed protecting. Even if it was just from himself. 

He slowly lowered the gun to rest on the stomach of the dead man before raising his hands in a sign of peace.

“Are you ok?” 

Zeke looked at him warily and gasped in sudden pain when he shifted. It seemed to break his hesitation.

“Well, I'm not dead,” he said. “Give me a hand.” 

Yuca went and offered him his shoulder. Zeke placed two hands on his back and levered himself up, leaning on Yuca. He was so short Zeke had to bend almost in half. They were walking out of the alley, weaving between bodies, when Zeke stopped.

“Hold on a second,” he said. He grunted, leaning over to picked up the gun, and fired two shots into the body of the man who'd threatened Yuca. It jerked under the impact of the bullets, a brief and grim imitation of life. The gun gave an empty _click_ as he fired the last bullet and clattered on the ground. Zeke spit on the corpse, the flecks landing on a paling cheek. 

“People who threaten kids belong in the lowest circle of hell,” he hissed, and his eyes were full of frost.

He returned his hand to Yuca's shoulder, limping forward. 

“No hospital,” he said. 

Yuca sighed, feeling tired and drained from the beat of adrenaline. He looked over his shoulder at the bodies.

"Anyone coming for them?" he asked. He felt more than saw Zeke shake his head.

"Not for a while."

"Cops?"

Zeke's laugh rumbled through his bones.

"Not in this neighborhood."

“Then we're staying here,” Yuca said, and pushed Zeke back against the brick. He let out a groan of pain as he slid to the ground, blood smearing on the concrete. Yuca let him fall. 

“What the fuck, kid?” he bit out. 

But Yuca was already shrugging out of his jacket, tugging his t-shirt over his head. His skin shuddered and shivered against the cold as if trying to shake it off, but he ignored it, kneeling down and yanking Zeke's injured leg up to rest on his shoulder. Zeke yelped.

“Put your hand here,” Yuca said, tapping the inner thigh above the femoral artery, and Zeke obeyed.

“Press with the heel of your hand, as hard as you can, and hold it.” He watched until he saw Zeke's hand go livid with strain, then placed the folded coat to the wound and leaned into it, using what small bit of weight he had to apply pressure. Zeke's felt like an iron weigh, dragging one half of his body down, _down into the dark water_. . . He shook his head and reached a hand up to touch the loosely woven cloth of Zeke's pants. The bold ridges of warp and weft, and the warm from the skin reassured him that _this_ was reality.

They stayed like that for a minute, Yuca watching the blood bloom in the cloth around the wound. He breathed slowly, the sharp smell of copper coating his tongue. He kept his eyes on his hands, a swirling wave rising in his throat, choking him. He wondered what he looked like now, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and skin dappled with blood. He wondered what Zeke thought of him. 

_This is what a monster looks like._

He heard Zeke blow out a deep breath, heard him take another and hold it. Let it out. Heard his head thud against the brick as he let it loll back. 

“We need to talk,” Zeke sighed, “About where you learned to shoot a gun and treat a bullet wound.” He looked up at Yuca, face drawn and pale from pain.

What could he say? _I was a general. A hunter, a mercenary, a foot soldier. I was a doctor in every age, from leeches and bodies stolen from graveyards to days where we programmed computers to hold the knife._ Instead, he pressed down harder on the T-shirt, watched Zeke's dark skin turn a shade paler. 

“The same place,” he said, “where you found people who would point a gun at my head.” 

Zeke laughed at that, a short bark of it. 

“Well, I've decided that's not the life for me,” he said, “I left it today. This is my severance pay.” He patted his leg with his free hand.

“Besides,” he said, “you--” he cleared his throat, “You seem like you need looking after. I'd like to. If you'd let me.” He smiled crookedly, mouth not pulling up all the way. 

Yuca let the words fall into him like the first drops of rain. They echoed and rippled inside and he had to close his eyes against their resonance. He'd be safe. He took a deep breath, held it, like Zeke had. He knew that to Zeke, he was an open door – an excuse to escape a dissatisfied life. There was no true feeling, no true tether holding them together. But hope was a sharp pain.

“I guess you'll have to be a respectable human, now,” Yuca found himself saying. He felt his lips tug up at the irony of the word “human.”

“We both will be,” Zeke said. He held out his hand, fingers curled against his palm, pinkie finger sticking out. 

Yuca looked at the hand, then back at Zeke. The gesture seemed absurd with three bodies lying beside them, slowly beginning to rot, and the hole in Zeke's thigh. He felt laughter bubbling up and was startled to find it slipping from his mouth. It sounded wheezing, rusted and little-used, but it was laughter, nonetheless. Zeke had dropped his smile, those summer-wood eyes on Yuca's face completely serious. He meant it. 

It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, he thought, and he had some time to burn until he could figure out Rain's date of birth. He smiled at Zeke, and the pull of his cheeks felt strange.

“We both will be,” he echoed, curling his pinkie around Zeke's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I am really bad at writing action/fight scenes, so writing this chapter was very difficult for me and took a lot of time. It's also not as solid as I'd like it to be, but it's not going to get any better any time soon. 
> 
> I can't promise when the next chapter will be as work is hella stressful right now, but I won't give up on this if you guys don't, deal?


	5. Withered stumps of time

Crow's feet, they were called. The delicate creases at the corner of his eyes. Bird scratches. 

Yuca stared at his face in the mirror and reached up a hand, smoothing a finger over the lines, pulling the skin taut, briefly. His eyes felt like they were burning into themselves, creating an endless loop, a void of self, and he had to look away. 

The hand dropped to the set of parenthesis by his mouth – laughter lines. He couldn't remember the last time he lived a life where he felt so much joy it left a scar. He watched the reflection of his fingers wander over his face, touching each wrinkle, ruffling each gray hair to catch the light. Age was a language his body had forgotten how to speak. 

When was the last time he had lived long enough for time to leave a mark? He stared at his hands, the skin bunching around knobby knuckles, the veins pressing to the surface. He'd always died young, given up too early or been lost in times too violent. Standing there, in the clean cut bathroom of a hospital he felt the weight of all those unborn years. They gathered around him like children, tugging at his coat. 

What could he have done, if he hadn't succumbed to the weight of water, an ocean of too much time? He would never know. He could not remember the last time he'd done anything in life besides drown. It had broken him. Every time.

Every time, but this time. 

This time, he had sight of the shore. The thought of Rain was a lighthouse blinding him in the dark – blazing and beautiful. In the end, the program had taken him years. Years to track down a birth date for Rain. Years to piece together numbers and code as he splintered with grief. 

And in the meantime, Zeke had kept him floating. Kept him clinging to life with the tips of his fingers. If it hadn't been for him, for his kindness – 

Yuca leaned back from the mirror and straightened his white coat, flipping his name tag so that it faced forward. His fingers lingered over the plastic for a moment, covering the name of the hospital. He thought about the oath he swore, years and years ago, now. The dusty scent of the paper, the light streaming in through the vaulted windows, Zeke's dark head out of the corner of his eye.

_First, do no harm._

He'd tried. God, he'd tried.

The bathroom door creaked open and Yuca shoved himself back from the sink. He didn't have time to reminisce today. 

He pushed through the door and out into the hall. The smell of artificial cleaner was everywhere, but it couldn't quite cover up the cloying smell of a hospital – plasma and metal and misery with a hint of lemon. Hospitals existed in a weird sort of twilight, an existence that wobbled between this reality and something other. In the bright glare of the ceiling lights it was easy to lose track of minutes, hours or days. If it weren't for the quiet that spooled through the halls at night, he wouldn't even know if it was noon or midnight. 

He paused by a window that overlooked the concrete roof below him. Noon. But the halls were empty.

When he reached the round hub of the nurses' station a young woman with bright blond hair smacked his arm with a clipboard as she walked past.

“You have to sleep sometime,” she told him. 

He rubbed at the bruised circles under his eyes, trying to remember when the last time he'd caught an hour or two of sleep and vivid memories. He'd worked his shift last night and hadn't slept since. It was an arrangement he preferred, it's why he'd become and admitting doctor. No one wondered why you didn't sleep if you had to stay up all night. But his bones were hollow with tiredness. He looked up at her, smoothing the winkles on his forehead with the heel of his palm.

“I will when people stop dying,” he said. 

It was an automatic, wry response. People would never stop dying. He would never sleep, if he could help it. He would carry on, time eroding him like a stone. To the nurse, it meant something entirely different. She paused, nails clicking against the metal as she tapped her clipboard, and looked pointedly down one of the hallways.

“Not today, then,” she said.

When he didn't respond she seemed like she wanted to say something else – a slight hesitation in a step forward – but she shook her head, ponytail swaying, and walked away, her blue scrubs seemed to glow and blur in the dim light of a hallway, as if she were moving too quickly. A creature with shining, fleeting life. He envied her that – he envied all of them. 

When he opened the door he was greeted by the hiss of an oxygen machine and scraping of Zeke's breath as it ground its way out of his chest. Age had shriveled him, shrunken him. He would never be small. The hospital bed would never dwarf him, as Yuca had seen it do to others. But he was less. 

Yuca was familiar with death. It lay on him like a shadow. But this slow wilting was something he could only remember as a fading flicker of memory. When people died around Yuca it was normally bloody. 

But Zeke was old. His hair white, his skin pressed into a thousand folds. He was less, and more than the man who had scooped Yuca up from a dumpster. Less body, muscle and energy. More life. 

Yuca dragged over a chair, the rubber stoppers shrieking against the linoleum, and sat down, leaning his arm against the bed's metal rails. He pulled out a book and folded back the cracked spine, searching for his place.

“I never could catch you sleeping,” Zeke said. 

Yuca glanced over to see that Zeke had his eyes closed, his hands folded on his chest. When his mouth moved the skin peeled and cracked. There was something sepulcher about his posture, as if he were already dead – as if he was speaking from beyond the grave. It made the hair on the back of Yuca's neck stand up, and he had to stop himself from leaning over, grabbing Zeke's bony wrist and taking a pulse. 

“All those nights you woke up screaming, you were already awake by the time I got there,” Zeke said, “You never did tell me what you were dreaming about that terrified you.” 

He paused, air suctioning into his lungs. 

“I always thought, if it scared you – after everything – it must have been bad,” he said. 

He let the implication lie between them, open and unfolded. After everything. After Zeke found him curled and covered in blood on a spring morning. After Yuca found Zeke shot in an alley. After he'd killed three men in cold blood. Yuca didn't answer, but flipped through the soft pages of his book until he found the spot where he left off.

They'd never talked about that night. When they finally limped home, Zeke packed a few small bags and they left. Yuca never asked for details, and Zeke never asked where a child learned to shoot with pin-point accuracy.

Instead, they'd lived in another town. In a green house with blue shutters. Zeke tried, and failed, to grow a garden in the back. He tried year after year – so often that when Yuca thought of him, he no longer remembered the alley, or the gun. He remembered Zeke kneeling in the full force of morning, hands plunged into the the dirt, trying to bring something good from it.

More than once, when Yuca found himself stopped, torn by grief with time crushing his spine, he'd found himself looking out the window at Zeke. Trying, and trying to make something grow. Sometimes, Yuca caught Zeke looking at him the same way he looked at a plant with wilted leaves. 

The same way he looked at something that would not thrive, no matter where it was planted, no matter how much water it was given. Zeke could never understand that sometimes things didn't have the will to bloom. 

He would not bloom. Instead, he'd kept his head down. He'd survived, and when his skin began to hang on him, began to loosen and pleat, he found he could barely remember this life. It was already fading, like old flowers pressed between pages. 

“You know, I never told you,” Zeke said.

Yuca thumbed over to the next page, the scrape of the paper sounding like waves rushing through rock. 

“You remember that teacher you had? The first one. Right after we moved.”

Yuca remembered her, barely. Strict. Blond hair pulled back. Not a button or a seam out of place. 

“We had a parent teacher meeting once,” Zeke said, “She called me in to the school. I thought you were in trouble. Hell, I thought I was in trouble.” He paused, eyes on the white tiles of the ceiling.

“But she wanted to tell me,” he paused to suck in a dry breath, “That you were the smartest student she'd ever had. Said she'd never seen anything like it.”

Zeke turned his head to face him.

“She said you could change the world, if you wanted.” 

He grew cold at the thought, numb fingers snapping the book's spine closed. He had changed the world. He had marked it, scarred it, countless times. He'd done his best to kill it, as it killed him. 

Zeke was looking at him, at his fingers tracing the creases of the book's spine, his summer eyes full of growth and green, trying to piece together his next words.

“You've been a strange kid, since the day I met you,” he said. 

It sounded like a question. It sounded like an end. Like he was finally asking for answers. Except this was Zeke. He never asked. Only waited, in questioning silence, his hands open for whatever Yuca would give him.

Yuca would give him nothing. 

“She was right,” Zeke said, bringing him back to himself. “And it always felt like . . . It felt like you settled.”

Yuca smiled, a thin blade of a thing.

“Are you worried I settled for you?” He said.

He could see the answer, written across Zeke's face. How expressive age could make a person. How those lines folded into letters, blossomed into words. He reached out and curled his fingers through Zeke's hand, feeling the skin, thin and dry and hot – the bird-like pulse fluttering faintly. 

“I didn't settle,” he said, looking Zeke in the eye, trying to fit that image of Zeke in the garden into his words. How that dedication kept him going, how that bright morning light flooded him. How it had reminded him of someone else, planting flowers, trying to grow light in dark places.

Yuca would not thrive, but not for lack of trying. They'd both made a promise, and he'd tried to keep it. But he was not viable. Not in this life. 

He tugged on Zeke's hand, feeling full, wanting to say so many things. 

“I wanted to make you proud,” he said, instead. 

“You did,” Zeke said. 

Yuca lowered his head, But Zeke still held his hand, warm and alive, for a little while longer. 

“You won't be lonely?” Zeke said. 

They hadn't talked about dying, but they both knew it was an inevitability. He would not mourn Zeke, his grief as all used up. What he held was force enough to make him crack – he didn't have the capacity to hold any more. When Zeke was gone, Yuca would move on. He had a date. After years of searching and braving memory, he had a date – or close enough. If he closed his eyes, the numbers shone in the dark. 

“No, I won't be lonely,” he said, so softly the words were almost lost in the silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long. Work has been absolutely insane, and I haven't had much time for anything else. Also sorry if this chapter is a bit stilted, this whole thing is still very new for me. 
> 
> Hopefully I'll have a new chapter up before too long, but I can't make any promises -- except to say that I am going to finish this fic if it kills me. 
> 
> Feedback, comments, questions are always appreciated!!


	6. Stirring dull roots with spring rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead!!

In his next life, his body was different. It happened sometimes, but he was always himself. And when he was born, as always alone and shivering, there was no one to argue otherwise.

He was in a home this time and left bloody footprints on the tile as he limped over to the bathroom, his legs still feeling new and trembling. He washed off the memory of the birth, a bloody baptism, and stole his mother's clothes. 

As he tugged a too-big shirt over his head, he stopped to smell the collar – sandalwood and something dry, like sawdust. As the soft, worn fabric settled around him, so did her scent. It would be the only thing she would give him. 

He paused on his way back down the hallway, caught by color visible in an open door. He pushed open the door and felt the creak of hinges echoing inside him. The walls, a soft yellow, were covered in bright photos and embroidery. There was a crib, and toys, a mobile of birds and pegasi soaring, wings outstretched. A nursery.

Yuca didn't have a name for the feeling it stirred up in him – for how he felt when he looked in the corner and saw an empty rocking chair with a blanket thrown over the back. Something like deep water, ruffled and churned by the wind. A sea of nameless turbulence. 

He closed the door silently, softly, and the click of the latch sounded like a cannon. He pressed his palm against the door, thought he could feel the sunshine, the color and a future that could never be, seeping through the wood into his skin. 

When he left the house, he did not turn to look at the body lying crumpled on the floor. 

\- - - -

He was barely alive. Time meant nothing. He'd stumbled from city to city until he found the place where Rain would appear. And then he waited, camping out on street corners, searching desperately. He didn't know, quite, how old he'd be. But he knew he would be here. He should be here.

He hoped. A quiet, seed of a thing. 

Day after day, Yuca wraped himself in a blanket and sat on the sidewalk with a tin in front of him. Some days the police chased him off, prodding him from the pavement with sharp shoes. Sometimes, others stole his money – he let them. 

And one day, someone stopped and spoke to him, someone with a voice gentle as spring – and he felt his heart flowering. _Rain._

Without realizing it he started forward, the blanket slipping from his shoulders, and grabbed the hand in front of him.

“Whoa, whoa,” the voice said. 

Yuca looked up. He would have known that face anywhere. In his sleep, in dreams, in death. Would die for it. Had died for it. 

He reached a filthy, scratched hand up and traced the jaw, sqaure and narrow. The hair was still that same, mousy blond that couldn't quite settle on a color, his eyes the same blue – though they lacked the depth he'd seen in them last. They lacked the sorrow.

And Rain, he was just there, frozen, staring back at Yuca. His face closed off and calculating in a look Yuca had never seen. In this life, Rain kept his secrets close.

“Rain,” Yuca said, and the name was a sob.

He grabbed Rain by the collar of his shirt and cried so hard he felt like the ocean was breaking through him. And through the heat and the tears he tried to say what he couldn't, last time.

“I'm so sorry,” he said, “I'm sorry. Please don't leave me.”

And slowly, as if they'd forgotten how, he felt the weight of arms settle around him, and a hand move to cradle the back of his head.

“Hey, it's ok,” Rain said, “You're ok. You're safe.” 

At that, an echo of words from someone else, from another life, Yuca felt the ocean swell. It began to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a paltry offering after being absent for almost a year. I apologize for the absence, and for the brevity -- I needed something short to get myself back in the swing of things again. But I know where the story is going from here for a good while! So hopefully if work cooperates I'll be able to get stuff out pretty much on the regular. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's read this, and to people who have stuck by me while life ran me over with a steamroller. 
> 
> If you read this and enjoy it please comment and tell me your thoughts!


	7. A word from the author

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some updates

Hey everyone,

First of all, I want to thank you guys so, so much for the feedback and the sweet comments. I haven't been up to replying, but please know that I treasure each one and am so thankful for each one of you.

Now, to business. First I want to make it clear that I am NOT giving up on this fic. But I wanted to let you know where I've been, and what's going to happen from here on out.

In a lot of ways, the past two years have not been good for me. I've lived with pretty bad anxiety for most of my life, and things kind of came to a head not too long after I started this fic. I've also developed depression in recent years, and that flared up as well.

Unfortunately, my job made both those issues worse, and last year it became hard to function. As you can probably guess, this fic was one of the things I had to sacrifice at the time.

On top of all this, my trusty little laptop finally bit the dust, and I was not (and am not) in a financial position to replace it. I'm currently writing this note out on mobile, which is almost exclusively how I've had to internet for the past year (so sorry if you see typos).

And so everything ground to a halt.

But I never forgot about it. I'd still plan stuff out and sketch out scenes. I thought about it constantly. Writing this story made me happy, and I wanted to continue -- but I wanted to do it justice.

What's posted now was often written in a rush, with little editing. I was just so concerned with getting it out and not buckling to the anxious part of me that tried to convince me to never write it, never post it. 

So. That brings us to 2018. I am in a much better place now. I started taking medication, which has helped a lot, and I'm seeing a therapist. 

I want to write again, and I've cobbled together a way for me to do that -- despite the lack of personal computer. 

So, I will continue this fic. But first, I'm going to rewrite it. I want to go back and edit what I've written so far, to expand it and make it something really special. 

I will not be taking this fic down. I will leave up what I have currently, and then replace everything in one whack once I've rewritten the first six chapters -- and have hopefully built a buffer.

I can't say how long this willing take me -- life is still crazy and my job is very demanding -- but please know I intend to finish this story. It may take years, but I will finish it.

I haven't given up on this. Thank you for not giving up on me.


End file.
